Green New Deal

Over 300 elected officials endorsed a letter calling on state and federal governments to address climate change.

As leaders responsible for America’s present and future prosperity, we must significantly raise the bar for climate leadership and set our nation on a new path. We join with states, cities, businesses, and institutions that are already taking bold action to protect public health and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in energy efficiency and clean energy like wind and solar.

And yet, Michael Duggin wonders if it's too late to persuade enough people of the urgency.

From my own experience, I have found that neither fact-based reason nor the resulting cognitive dissonance it instills change many minds once they are firmly fixed; rationalization and denial are the twin pillars of human psychology and it is a common and unfortunate characteristic of our species to double-down on mistaken beliefs rather than admit error and address problems forthrightly. This may be our epitaph.

Update (December 17):  COP24 ended with an agreement on a "rulebook" to implement the Paris goals. But Simon Pirani argues that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has only subordinated ecological interests to economic ones.

A huge amount of political energy is expended to convince us that the international climate talks are dealing with the global warming problem. They simply are not. Since 1992 the annual level of greenhouse gases emissions from fossil fuel use has risen by more than half. That is a failure. If we don’t characterize the talks in that way, we cannot deal with the political consequences.

The 2015 Paris agreement marked the final collapse of attempts to adopt binding emissions targets. I do not want to say the voluntary targets adopted are worthless, or that the policies adopted in some countries to achieve them are not helpful, or that serious efforts – most obviously, the substantial investment in renewable energy for electricity generation – are not being made to move away from some uses of fossil fuels. But we need to assess progress soberly and not confuse hopes with reality.

Even a Green New Deal faces divergent routes of being promoted as a market-oriented investment program versus "a program of state infrastructure investment".

Whether such a war-type mobilization would ever be implemented in any significant capitalist country remains to be seen.

[Instead of] just a social-democratic spending program, a much deeper-going shift to post-capitalist social relations could provide the context for the fundamental changes in social, economic and technological systems that will be necessary to break the economy’s many-sided dependence on fossil fuels.

Update (December 18):  Robert Hunziker points to a statement from 415 money managers as a sign of hope.

Global investors managing $32 trillion issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit ... demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis.

Update (December 20):  The Congressional Budget Office claims that climate change poses little economic risk to the U.S. in the next ten years.

Update (December 21):  House Democrats will revive a select committee on climate change, but it apparently won't focus only on creating a Green New Deal. Alexander Kaufman points to the effect of building support among 40 members of Congress.

The push forced a sea change in climate politics, pushing the policy debate from stagnant, wonky and dubious solutions centered on market tweaks to sweeping, dramatic policies that scientists say could actually make a dent in surging greenhouse gas emissions.

Update (January 2, 2019):  Ellen Brown describes how a Green New Deal could be funded.

Update (January 3, 2019):  Patrick Walker is skeptical over the willingness of Democrats to confront Dear Leader on his criminally insane climate policies.

Update (January 6, 2019):  Stuart Scott says our operating system is flawed--money and growth economics.

Update (January 7, 2019):  The Sunrise Movement is going on tour to promote a Green New Deal.

Update (February 3, 2019):  Rob Urie explains why the powers that be (including in the House) oppose a Green New Deal.

The larger issue remains that corporate profits and the wealth held by oligarchs are the wages of environmental destruction. Depending on how these are calculated, the net benefit of three centuries of capitalist production might easily have a giant minus sign in front of it. In this light, the insurgent Democrats’ offer to have the Federal government fund environmental resolution seems incredibly generous. It is the potential for upending existing power relations that makes it contentious.

Update (February 7, 2019):  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey announced a resolution describing the goals of the Green New Deal.

Update (February 9, 2019):  Joe Conason says the introduction of the resolution is already a significant accomplishment.

For the first time in years — perhaps for the first time ever — millions of Americans are not only fretting about the planet’s imperiled future but also organizing behind a visionary approach to its salvation.

Lacking in legislative details, this bill wasn’t drawn to address every aspect of climate policy or all of the economic changes required to reduce carbon emissions to zero within 10 years, its ambitious goal. The Green New Deal is an idea, designed to explode the myth that environmental progress must reduce economic growth and destroy jobs — as corporate propaganda has insisted for decades. Instead, this clean-energy transition promises full employment at living wages, universal health care and improved educational opportunity.

Naturally, Sean Hannity isn't convinced.

This is a real, serious threat to our way of life.

Yeah--a way of life that's leading us to disaster.

Update (February 12, 2019):  Jessica Corbett writes that "a growing number of labor, economic justice, racial justice, indigenous, environmental and community organizations have lined up behind the bold proposal and vowed to pressure lawmakers to pass" the Green New Deal resolution. It should be a major campaign issue in 2020. Terry Schwadron notes Republicans are mounting their attacks over the "excesses of government".

[T]hese attacks miss the point. The real meaning of the Green New Deal is that, as a society, we need to take on the ultimate environmental challenge as a social mission—a commitment to making substantial change.

Update (February 18, 2019):  Zach Carter and Alexander Kaufman argue now is not the time to quibble over cost.

The Green New Deal’s agenda is clear: Climate change is an emergency that deserves immediate attention. Millions of lives are quite literally at stake.

Update (February 22, 2019):  Lisi Krall questions whether a Green New Deal can function within a capitalist framework.

The GND’s problem, as I understand it, is that it wants to deal with the first contradiction of capital (job creation and new outlets for capital investment) and the second contradiction (biophysical limits) by assuming that we can transition to renewable energy seamlessly and at unrealistic speed, ultimately achieving both green growth and job security.

But, John Feffer and Jim Goodman do defend the resolution.

While the ultimate solution to [the inherent economic and social problems of capitalism] would be a different economic system, perhaps a social democracy, we must consider the GND as a part of a solution that we can no longer ignore.

Update (February 25, 2019):  Jeremy Brecher offers 18 Strategies for a Green New Deal.

Update (March 4, 2019):  Kristine Mattis argues that in terms of a Green New Deal, "the only sustainable policies are radical ones".

[I]f we can sum up the fundamental cause of our existential crisis in one simple phrase, it is this: our way of life. It is a way of life predicated on the desire for more – more energy, more products, more technology, more synthetics, more manufactured goods (i.e., bads), and more manufactured wants. Yet, our insatiable yearning for more has left us with less of the one thing upon which our entire lives depend: the natural world.

The low-carbon, more equitable future sought by the GND resolution is undeniably a good one; however, its foundation based on our current paradigm of prosperity – i.e., more energy, more production, more industry, more technology, more consumption – renders it insufficient to effect the radical changes we need for a sustainable future.

We have never, ever prioritized environmental concerns, which is why we find ourselves in this precarious predicament in the first place. Without fundamental changes, ecosystems will continue to deteriorate all around us to the point where our species is permanently imperiled. Humans have spent the past several centuries (at a minimum) despoiling the planetary ecosystem on which we all rely for life. The idea that it is impractical to attempt to deal with our ecological crises is frankly, insane. It suggests one must be either too obtuse to comprehend the simple scientific realities of our time, or too self-absorbed to care.

Update (March 30, 2019):  The coldest place on earth still faces melting as AOC campaigns for the GND.

Update (April 3, 2019):  It does seem important to make the distinction being thinking we can "fix" things versus asking "how do we prepare for where we're going". But that's not to say a Green New Deal can't make a difference and Lance Olsen defends the idea from all manner of disingenuous attacks.

Broadly framed, we have two choices now. Either we get the rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society that scientists and Green New Deal advocates are urging, or we get another, more costly, and decidedly unkinder kind of rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society if we allow fossil fuel capitalism to defeat us.

Update (April 28, 2019):  Nick Licata thinks the Democrats blew it:

Without the support of farmers and unions, the Green New Deal will remain a list of talking points for politicians. The democrats made a serious error releasing their 14-page non-binding House Resolution 109 without those groups taking a lead in its roll out.

Update (May 8, 2019):  Shamus Cooke worries that GND won't go far enough.

If the Green New Deal is viewed as a final destination— within a capitalist framework— instead of a pitstop toward further economic-climate transformation, we risk enormous energy being co-opted by the establishment that hope to prevent deeper necessary changes.

Update (May 16, 2019):  It's not called a Green New Deal, but Governor Jay Inslee has released a $9 trillion plan as part of his presidential campaign.

The 38-page Evergreen Economy Plan promises at least 8 million jobs over 10 years, and offers the most detailed policy vision yet for mobilizing the entire United States economy to stave off catastrophic global warming and prepare for already inevitable temperature rise.

Update (May 21, 2019):  Mark Mills with the conservative Manhattan Institute don't deny climate change, but throws cold water on the notion of a "new energy economy". He argues there are physical limitations and cost inefficiencies on renewable energy technology.

The scale challenge for any energy resource transformation begins with a description. Today, the world’s economies require an annual production of 35 billion barrels of petroleum, plus the energy equivalent of another 30 billion barrels of oil from natural gas, plus the energy equivalent of yet another 28 billion barrels of oil from coal. 

To completely replace hydrocarbons over the next 20 years, global renewable energy production would have to increase by at least 90-fold. For context: it took a half-century for global oil and gas production to expand by 10-fold. It is a fantasy to think, costs aside, that any new form of energy infrastructure could now expand nine times more than that in under half the time.

I'm not sure about all his details, but he's not necessarily wrong about the impossibility of maintaining current levels of energy consumption without fossil fuels. We just don't want to give that up.

Update (June 14, 2019):  Richard Moser contrasts the Green New Deal from the Democratic Party with that of the Green Party.

Update (June 15, 2019):  Matthew Rozsa gives an overview of the Green New Deal.

Update (June 16, 2019):  Carl Pope discusses the climate plans of the major Democratic contenders.

Update (June 22, 2019):  Paul Rosenberg responds to Pope and makes the case for a climate debate among the Democrats.

Update (July 24, 2019):  Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are planning a "bold", watered-down version of the Green New Deal.

The Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate advocacy group that thrust the Green New Deal into the national spotlight, accused the committee of "misrepresenting the science" by saying a 2050 net-zero emissions target in the U.S. aligns with the scientific consensus.

"That is what the world’s top scientists at the United Nations are saying, conservatively, is necessary to achieve globally," Sunrise co-founder Varshini Prakash said in a statement. "It’s clear that if we are to achieve that goal globally, the United States — as one of the world’s largest and most developed economies — must move much more aggressively. To set a low goal that is misaligned with what science demands out of the gate is irresponsible, and bargaining against our future."

Update (August 8, 2019):  Aviva Chomsky discusses the interplay among unions, environmental organizations and the Green New Deal.

Update (August 24, 2019):  Pete Dolack describes the Democratic resolution as a watered down version of the Green Party's plan, which is, nevertheless, unrealistic without the support of leadership.

A more fundamental problem is that the backers of the Democratic Green New Deal seem to assume that a program challenging corporate interests to such a serious degree can be fully implemented in the current U.S. political and economic system, and that corporate interests will simply sit back and allow such a program not only to be signed into law but to actually be implemented. A massive social movement, bringing together the widest possible array of organizations and resolute in using a multitude of tactics inside and outside the system, could bring about the proposed program, but there is not a word of public involvement in the Democratic program. It is all to be created by congressional action.

[S]hutting down entire industries and overhauling the world’s economic system will come at serious cost. It’s not realistic to pretend otherwise. Those of us in the advanced capitalist countries will have to consume less, including using less energy. That, too, is inescapable and both Green New Deals fail to address that.

This is a debate that shouldn’t be reduced to a sterile "revolution or reform" opposition. We need all the reform we can achieve, right now. The balance, nonetheless, is clearly on the side of advocates who push for the fastest possible transition to a new economy, one not dependent on fossil fuels. An economy based on meeting human need and in harmony with the environment, not one made for private profit and that externalizes onto society environmental and other costs. The price of business as usual will be catastrophic environmental damage. Socialism or barbarism remain humanity’s future options.

Update (October 3, 2019):  Don Fitz discusses the Green Party debate over GND and asks whether it is environmentally sound to continue to seek increasing production.

Update (October 10, 2019):  John Davis sees "accursed wealth" as the greatest obstacle to change.

It was the ideas of Descartes and Bacon that created a space, in the early seventeenth century, for a scientifically founded modernity. The climate emergency – the planetary crisis – now demands, not a Green New Deal which recycles Gore’s still-born ‘Global Marshall Plan’, but the attempted closure of modernity through a complementary revolution in thought – an intellectual foment capable of turning back the rapacious appetites of capitalism.

Update (October 17, 2019):  Jon Rynn explains the Green Economy Reconstruction Program as proposed by the Green Party.

Update (December 7, 2019):  John Atcheson supports a Green New Deal saying half measures won't work.

[I]t’s too late to rely on the market to solve the crisis we’ve put ourselves in. No politically acceptable tax or fee will foster the magnitude of change we need, in the time we need it.

Update (December 22, 2019):  Carl Boggs argues that the GND as proposed in the U.S. doesn't go far enough.

If the transnational corporate order remains intact it is hard to see how a fossil-fuel economy embedded in American capitalism will be materially weakened, given its many trillions of dollars invested in deeply-embedded modes of production and consumption.

Economic predictions indicate that leading industrialized nations could easily double their GDP output within the next two or three decades. It is delusional to believe vulnerable ecosystems could endure such overburdening "development" very far into the future.

Update (December 31, 2019):  As a key aspect of a Green New Deal, Ellen Brown cites David Perry in pointing to regenerative agriculture as a way of removing carbon dioxide from the air. Restoring soil carbon content from 1 percent to 3 percent could sequester a trillion tons of carbon--approximately the amount released since industrialization began.

Update (February 23, 2020):  Cameron Roberts uses historical case studies to argue against "carbon pricing as the primary way to promote low-carbon technologies and practices".

[R]adical technological change was achieved not by relying on price signals to coordinate change, but by the state intervening and coordinating it directly.

Update (May 21, 2020):  Don Fitz reviews The Green New Deal and Beyond by Stan Cox.

Stan Cox is one of those intense thinkers who are highly cautious about unbridled support for a concept that might have drawbacks. In his forward to the book Noam Chomsky notes that pro-GND US congresspersons do not directly challenge the fossil fuel industry. And Naomi Klein, who enthusiastically endorses what Cox writes, precautions that we must be wary that good paying green jobs do not morph into high-consuming lifestyles that add to greenhouse gas emissions.

Update (June 25, 2020):  Marshall Auerback wants an expanded GND.

The pandemic suggests that we may need to incorporate a wider and more complex range of priorities than the ones that are baked into existing Green New Deal models.

[T]he GND models need to incorporate more of our immediate social needs—better public health, infrastructure and education, freedom from punitive personal debt, and a more equitable and democratic political system—as well as national economic priorities, such as manufacturing and an end to wasteful military spending.

Today’s Green New Deal is achievable, but we’re going to need a bigger acronym and a more expansive vision that incorporates many of the things we have learned during this pandemic. The likely structural changes required to offset the damage left in its wake are profound, but the burdens must be shared more equitably and the benefits dispersed more broadly, if it is to have any chance of success. Our future prosperity, indeed the future success of our democracy, depends on it.

Update (July 6, 2020):  Michael Galant discusses a Global Green New Deal.

To escape the global recession and build a more resilient world on the other side, we need to rewrite the rules. We need a system of trade that puts workers and the environment before corporate profits. We need enforceable global floors on wages, labor laws, and environmental protections. We need global coordination to end the scourge of tax havens, debt relief for countries in crisis, and massive global redistribution.

Matthew Rosza calls for a Green Declaration of Independence.

In addition to existential threats like global warming and the pandemic, people throughout the world are becoming rapidly more aware of systemic injustices directly caused by prevailing political and economic power structures. We have a military-industrial complex that wages constant wars, weapons of mass destruction that could mark the death of our species and pollution that could wipe us off the planet by lowering our sperm count. We have a racist prison-industrial complex that deprives millions of people of their most basic freedoms and severe income inequality that leads to rampant economic suffering and the deprivation of opportunities for social mobility for millions of people.

In short, we are a society in which "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" either do not exist or are seriously threatened for, literally, everyone. As a result, we need to be liberated from the forces that are causing this — and far more urgently than the colonists needed to be freed from King George III more than two centuries ago.

Update (July 19, 2020):  More from Jon Rynn about using a Green New Deal to create a new economic system.

The economy is an ecosystem, but it is one that is heading for collapse. By reorienting the economy to revolve around the government-led, manufacturing-centered, and sustainable creation of wealth, we can reconstruct the broken systems that are causing so much misery and distress, and guarantee that the civilization will be viable over the long term.

Update (August 24, 2020):  Howie Hawkins, Mark Dunlea, and Jon Rynn defend a robust GND.

[T]he Democrats have taken the Green Party’s Green New Deal slogan, divested it of real content, and finally abandoned it altogether in the 2020 Democratic platform.

Resign

After a tumultuous campaign by the most unqualified candidate and despicable human being in history, his presidency has been a long stretch of disasters revealing increasing corruption and outright criminality. Recent sentencing memos paint the clearest picture yet that Fuckface von Clownstick does not belong in office.

Though impeachment is well deserved, Amanda Marcotte notes that conviction in the Senate is highly unlikely.

[A]n expanded Republican majority in the Senate is fully committed to doing everything it can to thwart the rule of law and the will of the people to protect the great orange menace glowering in the Oval Office.

If and when [Dear Leader] is acquitted in the Senate, he will immediately equate that with an exoneration.

Pubic pressure through the media won't happen because there's a desire to believe office-holders are well-meaning.

There's no way most pundits will ever admit that the entire Republican majority in the Senate supports [Fuckface] not because they believe he's not guilty, but because they don't care if he's guilty.

Marcotte says the electoral solution is best--a Democrat needs to succeed him to prevent a pardon.

[L]et's keep our eyes on the prize: Jail time for [Fuckface], and no state funeral. To get there, patience will be required.

Cody Fenwick argues there's a solution to the impeachment dilemma. Call for resignation.

Republicans will say that impeachment, investigations, and scrutiny of the president's misdeeds will damage the country. They are probably right. But ignoring the mountains of evidence against the president would do much more harm to the country by sending a signal that the people cannot trust their government and that powerful people will never be held accountable.

And if Republicans are concerned about the harm the proceedings will cause, they can join with Democrats in the calls for resignation. Democrats could rightly say they've been backed into a corner, but that resignation offers the country a way out of the unfolding chaos. If [Dear Leader] stepped down, he'd be saving the country from an awful lot. If he stays on, despite the damning case against him, he is responsible for the trauma the ongoing fights inflict upon the American people, not the Democrats.

Update (January 20, 2019):  In an interview with Andrew O'Hehir, Andrew Coan explains the role of special counsel in U.S. history and notes that Robert Mueller's report isn't necessarily going to be as damaging as most people assume.

Also,  Yoni Appelbaum gives a extended argument for impeaching Dear Leader.

Only by authorizing a dedicated impeachment inquiry can the House begin to assemble disparate allegations into a coherent picture, forcing lawmakers to consider both whether specific charges are true and whether the president’s abuses of his power justify his removal.

Update (March 4, 2019):  The House Judiciary Committee is requesting information from 81 people/agencies/organizations with ties to Fuckface von Clownstick. Chair Jerrold Nadler:

We have sent these document requests in order to begin building the public record. The Special Counsel's office and the Southern District of New York are aware that we are taking these steps. We will act quickly to gather this information, assess the evidence, and follow the facts where they lead with full transparency with the American people.

Update (March 6, 2019):  Paul Blumenthal explains what Democrats are looking at:

The document requests by the House Judiciary Committee focus on five lines of investigation: 1) the [Moscow Tower] deal negotiations, 2) possible conspiracy between the [von Clownstick] campaign and the Russian government and other foreign governments to influence the 2016 presidential election, 3) possible crimes to cover up the alleged conspiracy, 4) payment of hush money to the president’s extramarital lovers in violation of campaign finance laws and 5) the president’s receipt of money in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Update (March 8, 2019):  Seriously deranged or a winning strategy?

Update (December 29, 2019):  F. Michael Higginbotham calls on Dear Leader to resign.

The divisions in the country today are even more corrosive than they were in 1974. That’s why it’s even more important that [Fuckface] emulate the best of Richard Nixon, who, in a rare moment of grace, understood he could only weaken the nation he led by focusing solely on himself, and chose the better path.

Simple Human Principles

Nathan Robinson reflects on the values he's realized through the works of Noam Chomsky. Robinson notes that Chomsky's political writing has been done out of sense of moral obligation.

I am skeptical of anyone who "likes" politics. Perhaps if we lived in a world without injustice, and we were just debating what color to paint the new village merry-go-round, it would be possible to find politics a source of enjoyment. But in a world where there are serious human stakes to politics, it is not a game. Chomsky came into political activism because he was horrified that hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people were being doused with napalm by the United States military. The idea of "liking" politics seems perverse. Those who know Chomsky have said that he is motivated by a deep and sincere compassion for the victims of atrocities committed by his country; Fred Branfman recalled a visit with Chomsky to the site of U.S. bombing in Laos, where Chomsky wept after hearing stories from Laotian refugees, displaying the "most natural, human response" of the foreign visitors when compared with the stony journalists who simply took notes.

I’ve always been reminded by this to remember what "politics" is about: It isn’t pro wrestling, it isn’t a horse race. It’s the process that determines how power is going to be used.

Update (December 8):  Even if we don't like politics, it remains important for citizens of a functioning democracy to be informed. An excerpt from The Chomsky Reader gives his view for why people focus attention on subjects other than politics.

I think that this concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that's far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that's in fact what they do. I'm sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere.

Now it seems to me that the same intellectual skill and capacity for understanding and for accumulating evidence and gaining information and thinking through problems could be used -- would be used -- under different systems of governance which involve popular participation in important decision-making, in areas that really matter to human life.

Poser President

Instead of seeking out real solutions, Dear Leader only knows how to issue threats when a company like General Motors announces plant closures with nearly 15,000 jobs cut. Bob Hennelly hopes the election results indicate that more workers now realize who their real friends are.

In December 2018 [von Clownstick], the once fiery populist avenger, has shrunk in stature. He’s now a self-obsessed narcissist, unable to stay focused long enough to keep his "no-collusion" story straight, never mind capable of compelling American multinationals to put American workers ahead of their global pursuit of ever greater profits.